500px is a photographic community that lets users share artistic and inspiring pictures. It has been available in the App Store since October 2011 with no complaints, but when 500px wanted to release an updated version of the app for iOS, Apple put a quick stop to it and removed the app from its store for iOS.

"The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines," said Apple in a statement. "We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We’ve asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app."

500px disagrees with Apple's complaints. According to the Toronto-based startup, nude photos are not easy to find on its app at all. A user cannot simply launch the app and find nude photos. The app is defaulted to a safe search mode, where any nude photos are automatically hidden, and in order to turn the safe search off, users must go to their desktop to personally request the change.

Also, 500px noted that the nude photos on its app are not pornographic. They are artistic nudes that are similar to those one might find in a museum or art gallery. It is against 500px's rules to upload pornographic images, and if someone in the community breaks these rules, the image is flagged and removed.

However, 500px said it had been working on new safeguards for preventing pornographic images. It works kind of like facial recognition technology, where pornographic images are taken out of search results right away. In fact, 500px said the technology is just about done and ready to be submitted.

But Apple couldn't wait any longer, and decided to single 500px out among the other photo-sharing apps (Tumblr, Instagram). Both the 500px and ISO500 apps (both made by 500px) have been removed from the App Store. 500px is hoping they'll return now that the new technology for detecting nudes is nearly finished.

Hey Apple - there's porn on the internet. You can access it via Safari on your iThing. And there's nothing that can be done about it. There may be untold millions of people, right now, fapping to porn they're looking at on their iThings.

Apple patent pending S130417926- aka the 'co*k block' patent. Patent describes process of removing Apple deemed 'unwanted' gestures and movements from reality. Also used in conjunction with another pending patent S130451728 which applies Apple's censorship to 'other devices' (such as a human body) which will also include iDevices.

of the Puritan-based mentality that still persists in this country. Just because its nudity does not mean its pornographic. Read the first two sentences from Wikipedia: sexual content for the purpose of sexual gratification. The display or portrayal of the human body in its natural, God-given (ironic reference intentional) form, where the audience is not people trying to get themselves off should be considered art and protected by the first amendment.

Other countries do just fine with nudity and their kids grow up just like ours, if not better and more informed. I mean really, do we all think our ancestors who lived for millions of years without such fear of exposed skin were any worse off than we are?

I will be the last person to defend Apple, but isn't that mentality very typical of American policy in general? They can show dead terrorists with limbs blown off on the news, but a but crack showing out the top of someone's pants needs to be blurred.

Hell, fox news about a month ago aired a live suicide after a high speed police chase...

Yes, but Apple will say "we won't allow porn on the iFoney" and people will believe that and buy their devices. When we all know there's not the slightest thing they can do about getting porn on an iFoney.

The worst part about Apple, and the sheeple who buy their products, is that there's no legal way to dispose of them. We just have to try to get along, knowing there's companies and people amongst us who are just *that* stupid.

i dont think is just steve's legacy being steve's legacy. Apple will only do what it has incentive to do for its own gain and thus its analysis of the populace is nude=bad bad bad. And an app made for (hence the lack of protest) and by photographers is fine except when it comes to the female or male form. As someone above pointed out, would they ban nude oil paintings as well? You better believe i've personally witnessed people offended by them too.

I live in a city as cities are generally socially liberal. Its not wild and crazy like New Orleans or Vegas, but people are generally like, ok sure whatev. But even in cities, and especially outside, I just to this day still run into people that say outright: "well God only made sex for humans to make babies. Pleasures of the flesh is sinful. And, my favorite, marriage is between a man and a woman under the presence of God as is the conception that follows and anything otherwise is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah."

I have seen some very erotic images with the models fully, or mostly clothed, as well as several artistic, and dare I say, platonic, images of nude people, including full frontals of males and females of all ages.

If the images that instigated the ban were vibrators up the [whatevers] I may see their point, since that should be, IMO, a private endeavor. This would be an obviously provocative image/video. If it were more like 'I'm nude, but who cares', or 'aren't they cute' then it should be allowed, IMO.

Problem is, the first amendment only restricts Congress and the various state constitutions also limit the state legislatures from banning, or even allowing this. Private companies, such as Apple, are not restricted from limiting anything on their site, store, or devices, that they don't want.

If you have a problem with that, break the i[whatevers] or use something else.